hatchet
English
edit
Etymology
editFrom Middle English hachet, a borrowing from Old French hachete, diminutive of hache (“axe”), from Vulgar Latin *happia, from Frankish *happjā, from Proto-Germanic *hapjǭ, *habjǭ (“knife”), from Proto-Indo-European *kop- (“to strike, to beat”). Cognate with Old High German happa, heppa, habba (“reaper, sickle”), German Hippe (“billhook”), Dutch heep, hiep (“billhook”), and Ancient Greek κοπίς (kopís). Mostly displaced native Old English handæx, whence Modern English hand axe.
Pronunciation
edit- IPA(key): /ˈhæt͡ʃɪt/
Audio (Southern England): (file) - Rhymes: -ætʃɪt
Noun
edithatchet (plural hatchets)
- A small, light axe with a short handle; a tomahawk.
- 1843, [James Fenimore Cooper], Wyandotté, or The Hutted Knoll. […], volume I, Philadelphia, Pa.: Lea and Blanchard, →OCLC, page 117:
- “It must be admitted, Nick, you are a very literal logician—‘dog won't eat dog,’ is our English saying. Still the Yankee will fight the Yengeese, it would seem. In a word, the Great Father, in England, has raised the hatchet against his American children.”
- 1855 November 10, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Blessing the Corn-fields”, in The Song of Hiawatha, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, →OCLC, page 175:
- Buried was the bloody hatchet, / Buried was the dreadful war-club, / Buried were all warlike weapons, / And the war-cry was forgotten.
- 1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., →OCLC; republished as chapter III, in Hugo Gernsback, editor, Amazing Stories, part I, number 11, New York, N.Y.: Experimenter Publishing, February 1927, →OCLC, book I, page 1158:
- The fellow was armed with a stone-shod spear, a stone knife and a hatchet. In his black hair were several gay-colored feathers.
- (figurative) Belligerence, animosity; harsh criticism.
- 1843, [James Fenimore Cooper], Wyandotté, or The Hutted Knoll. […], volume I, Philadelphia, Pa.: Lea and Blanchard, →OCLC, page 42:
- “Dat true as missionary! What a soldier do, cap'in, if so much peace? Warrior love a war-path.”
“I wish it were not so, Nick. But my hatchet is buried, I hope, for ever.”
- 2016 April 9, Philip Oltermann, “Michael Hofmann: ‘English is basically a trap. It’s almost a language for spies’”, in The Guardian[1], →ISSN:
- The savagery with which Michael Hofmann can wield a hatchet has earned him unlikely fans outside the literary circuit. A recent issue of Viz ran a cartoon of the critic, poet and translator urinating all over a phone booth, while two donnish FR Leavis types nodded appreciatively from a safe distance.
Derived terms
editTranslations
editsmall axe
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Verb
edithatchet (third-person singular simple present hatchets, present participle hatcheting or hatchetting, simple past and past participle hatcheted or hatchetted)
- (transitive) To cut with a hatchet.
Categories:
- English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *(s)kep-
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms derived from Old French
- English terms derived from Vulgar Latin
- English terms derived from Frankish
- English terms derived from Proto-Germanic
- English 2-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio pronunciation
- Rhymes:English/ætʃɪt
- Rhymes:English/ætʃɪt/2 syllables
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with quotations
- English terms with collocations
- English verbs
- English transitive verbs
- en:Weapons